


Good Will Toward Men

by Relvetica



Category: Tokyo Babylon
Genre: Gen, the war against christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2699726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Relvetica/pseuds/Relvetica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raising a boy in a house full of antiques was a bad idea. More so, it happened, if he was to be an onmyouji whose prophesied powers finally blossomed violently when he was least capable of dealing with them. Subaru, at fourteen (fifteen in February) was breaking a lot of antiques.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Will Toward Men

All his life, the elders of his clan had said that puberty would be a problem for him. He hadn't known what they'd meant, except that his grandmother had suffered a bout of what they had identified (weirdly, in his opinion) as _kage no yamai_ in her own youth. He could not question a diagnosis from so far away in years, but he knew, having a worldlier education than she'd had access to at his age, the signs of poltergeist behavior around an unhappy child.

Now, as Sumeragi Subaru picked up the shards of one of his grandmother's nicer looking vases - he hadn't even touched it - he could only hope that it wasn't one of her favourites. The pieces didn't cut him; the breaks were as smooth as though the vase had originally been made in pieces.

Raising a boy in a house full of antiques was a bad idea. More so, it happened, if he was to be an onmyouji whose prophesied powers finally blossomed violently when he was least capable of dealing with them. Subaru, at fourteen (fifteen in February) was breaking a lot of antiques. He also tore a lot of paper screens by getting flustered and blew out a lot of light bulbs just by walking beneath them. Just thinking the wrong things seemed to do damage. His grandmother encouraged mental control and meditation, but he had a terrible suspicion that she was laughing as soon as one of them left the room. _Kage no yamai_. Sure.

His twin sister, by comparison, seemed to be dancing her way through her youth as effortlessly as the butterflies she had sewn onto her sneakers. Someday she would figure out how to construct shoes from scratch, and no one would never be safe again. People used to think that Subaru and Hokuto were close enough to identical as to make no real difference; nobody thought that anymore. Boys had already begun to hesitantly flirt with her, drawn toward her vibrancy as though she were a sun.

Subaru wasn't sure how he felt about that.

He walked through the house, cradling the broken vase in hands that seemed much larger than they had been even last week (his gloves were getting too small again), heading toward the kitchen. Maybe Hokuto would fix it. It would be New Year's in a few days. Breaking something old and valued was bad luck.

Hokuto was in the dining room, kneeling at the table, surrounded by a small ocean of mangled white paper. He eyed this with a certain amount of dread. "I broke a vase."

She put down the sheet of paper she was currently struggling with and glanced up irritably. "Again? Grandmother's gonna explode someday." She sat up straight. "Lemme see."

Subaru set the pieces down on table after sweeping away paper that, on closer inspection, bore a lot of uneven folds and creases. "It broke pretty cleanly. None of the pieces fell or anything." He frowned down at her. "What...?"

"Hm?" Hokuto picked up a shard and squinted at it.

"...What are you doing?"

She sighed dramatically and started to work out where the vase's pieces fit together. "I'm trying to make cranes. It's so hard!" She pouted up at him. He wondered if he could reproduce that expression if he even tried.

"New Year's is in a week. We're supposed to be cleaning the house, not...." He trailed off as her pout grew momentarily more intense. "...Why are you trying to make cranes?"

"Because," she said, "it's Christmas tomorrow. I need them for the tree. Could you go get the glue? It's in the kitchen."

Subaru blinked at her. "...We have a tree?"

"Just a little one. I bought it this morning. It's so cute! It has little lights and a little star at the top." She beamed up at him. "I got a Christmas cake, too. We can eat it tomorrow morning. I'm so excited!"

He sighed a little and knelt beside to her, picking up one of the sheets of paper. "A Christmas cake." He pressed it flat on the table to straighten it a little.

"All of the bakeries are selling them. Haven't you seen them? It's traditional."

"Hm." He began to refold the white paper against lines that were slightly off from his sister's attempt. "Only in Japan. They don't sell those in Christian countries."

Hokuto blinked. "They don't?"

He shrugged. "Shops here will sell cakes for anything."

"Well, they _do_ have trees, right? Don't spoil this for me. I'm having fun."

"I know." He didn't look up as he concentrated on the little paper bird. "Yeah, they have trees. But they don't have much to do with anything, either. Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, but nobody knows when he was really born. Just another excuse to sell jewelery and cakes."

"Subaru, what is _with_ you? I'm going to fix this stupid vase, so stop being such a downer. Holidays never really _mean_ anything. They're to make people to be happy, and gods like to see people happy."

Subaru set a small paper crane on the table and sighed softly. "Sorry."

She picked it up again and squinted at it. "It's okay. Could you do that again? I wasn't watching."

Another discarded piece of paper was selected and unfolded, and this time Hokuto leaned in to watch closely. "When did you learn to do origami?"

Subaru shrugged again. "I don't remember. Grandma showed me."

Hokuto picked up a paper from the neat little pile of fresh sheets on the floor. "Are you okay? You seem awfully grumpy."

"I'm fine."

"It was just a silly vase. She won't care. She probably broke a bunch when she was our age."

Subaru smiled. "Maybe."

"So _cheer up!_ It's Christmas! Or New Year's, whatever." Hokuto bounced in place a little and began to mangle her paper with enthusiasm.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. "Hokuto-chan?"

"Hmm?"

"There's... um... something I wanted to talk to you about."

Hokuto looked up, her eyes still sparkling. "Eh?"

Subaru scowled as the crane's head ended up pointing the wrong way. Folding paper that had been folded in another direction already was hard. "Just that... um..." He paused for a long moment and shrugged. "I'm moving to Tokyo next year. After our birthday."

She bounded to her feet, her face as brightly lit as her little lights. "We are?!"

He winced. "I am."

"We are! Uh... why?"

This was not, honestly, what he had primed himself to talk about. Having found himself too shy, his side of the conversation turned flatfooted. He wasn't supposed to talk about this with Hokuto until he and their grandmother had worked out the details. "Because... because Grandma is getting old, and she says she's tired of traveling when when our clients up there need somebody. So, that way, she can take care of Kyoto, and I can handle Tokyo."

She hopped on her toes, beaming down at him. "Oh, that will be wonderful! I can't wait!"

"Hokuto-chan... if you come with me, Grandma will be alone."

She made a rude noise. "Nonsense. She has the rest of the family and the house staff. She'll be fine. I'm not going to let you go alone. Who knows what sort of trouble you'll get yourself into?" She leaned in and grinned. "There are a lot of dangerous men in Tokyo."

His little paper crane suddenly seemed fascinating. "There are dangerous people everywhere."

"And that's why you need your big sister to look out for you!" She sat down again with flourish. "Oh, we'll have so much fun! It will just be us! No curfews, nobody looking over our shoulders all the time, no one to give us a bad time about... anything." She grinned. "We have to wait for two whole months?"

"Yeah." Subaru fiddled with the crane.

"Some freedom will be really nice." He could tell she was looking at him, speaking pointedly. He frowned a little.

"It won't be that different from before."

Hokuto took his crane away, pinching it by its pointed beak and spinning it between her fingers. "You know, Subaru... there's something I've been meaning to talk to _you_ about."

He looked up and blinked. "Huh?"

She bit her lip, looking like she was looking for a way to work herself.. "Do you remember... we must have been what, eight? It was before you started wearing gloves... remember when you knocked into Grandma's chess set and one of the rooks fell? And you didn't notice?"

"Um... kind of? Yeah." Perhaps his clumsiness wasn't entirely the fault of puberty.

"And I knew where it had rolled to before you even knew it was missing?"

"Oh... yes. Grandma made a big deal out of that. Some kind of... shadow... thing...?"

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter."

"Well, you brought it up--"

"Onmyoudou doesn't matter, the chess set doesn't matter. All that matters to me? Is you." Her eyes were as bright and intense as they always were, but they seemed so much more so focused on his. "I know everything about you, Subaru. I know things that maybe you don't know. I know things sometimes without knowing I know them. But it doesn't matter why."

Subaru felt oddly transfixed, staring back into her brilliant gaze.

She made a frustrated little hand gesture. "What I mean is... when you say you have something to talk to me about, and then you... can't? It's okay, because I know. I know, Subaru. And I know that you need me, a lot more than you think you do." She tapped the side of her nose and winked. "Because there _are_ dangerous men in Tokyo. And I know more about that sort of thing than you do, because you've been too scared to find out."

He stared at her, eyes wide. He could feel himself beginning to blush.

She smiled. "I love you, Subaru. Merry Christmas." She reached up and balanced the crane on his head. "And a happy new year."

The crane fell off his head and hit his nose on the way down.

"And I told you to go find the glue! It's still sitting next to the last vase you broke. If you make me get up for this, you'll be sorry!"

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this approximately fifteen years ago (I flinched typing that), but I don't think it's aged too poorly. Happy Holidays, all.


End file.
